


we might be hollow, but we're brave

by loonyBibliophile



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Character Study, F/M, could be seen either way really, mentions of other characters and relationships, semi platonic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2643935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyBibliophile/pseuds/loonyBibliophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk Strider gets to know his best friend in pieces. At first it’s keystrokes, bright pink text on a white screen. Sh makes too many typos, and he wonders if she’s really as drunk as she claims to be or if it’s an act. He can’t decide which is sadder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we might be hollow, but we're brave

Dirk Strider gets to know his best friend in pieces. At first it’s keystrokes, bright pink text on a white screen. Sh makes too many typos, and he wonders if she’s really as drunk as she claims to be or if it’s an act. He can’t decide which is sadder. Then it’s her face, nervous and scared through a webcam. Her hair is blonde and curly, her eyes are rimmed with dark makeup, which seems strange and superfluous to him in a world where no one exists but them.

He gets to know her wrists, delicate and bony, as they fling her hands about excitedly and hold up glasses. He gets to know her hands, long and graceful fingers with manicured nails, wrapped elegantly around a glass she should be too young to hold. Her lips, and the nervous tick that drags her teeth through her dark lipstick, and the stark contrast of black smudges on sharp white teeth. Her eyes are pink, the only reason he lets her see his own eyes, and wide and bright and the kind of sad that makes his chest ache. But when she laughs, when she laughs her whole face glows, and the lights in her eyes dance, and maybe she’s the only person he’s ever seen but she’d be the most beautiful person he’d ever seen even if he’d seen every person in the world. 

They’re fourteen when they find other people and that means Dirk is sixteen when for the first time he understands the way Roxy looks at him, and he feels his heart shatter in his chest with how much he loves her and how much it’s just not the right way. They’ve been the world to each other for years and as nice as it is to have new people, it throws him off balance. 

When he finally gets to see all of her, he wishes it was under literally any other circumstance. Things are hard and awkward and he can barely look at her, but he can feel the resignation in the way she isn’t looking at him the way she always used to. In the way she isn’t looking at him at all. Then everything spirals out of control and people are dying and all he can think is he never once told her how much he loved her. The fact that he doesn’t know how anymore isn’t important, but it’s important that he loves her, it’s important that she is the most important thing in the world to him, and he hates himself for never telling her. For letting her die twice without ever knowing. 

Everyone gets split apart and he tries desperately to find them, only to find everything is gone again. Only to not find anything. Only to not find her. So he lets himself fade away. 

When he sees her again, finally, and she’s not dead, it takes everything he says not to drop to his knees. He tells her he’s sorry, tells her he isn’t worthy of even dying next to her. She shoves his shoulder, hard, and tells him he’s an asshole, and it’s about time he showed up. He doesn’t say anything, just pulls her to his chest and holds on as hard as he can, relishes the feeling of her against him, over her arms and those bony wrists and delicate fingers he knows and loves so well pressed anxiously into his back, because he might never get to again. She is smiling when he pulls away, his favorite smile, all bright wide eyes and black smudged teeth. He pushes his shades up and knocks his head piece off and smiles back, wider than he thinks maybe he ever has. 

Roxy laces her fingers into his and Dirk looks down at the cautious look on her face, at the nervous bend of lips he’s seen a thousand times, and the tiny furrow of her eyebrows, and the way her polished fingers, shining with pink glitter even now, rest on his bruised knuckles.   
He squeezes her hand and tells her he loves her, he’s not sure how but if he knows anything in this weird fucked up universe, it’s that he loves her. She smiles and says she knows, but the press of her into his side lets him know she’s glad to hear him say it. 

And he thinks that maybe, just maybe, it’s going to be okay.


End file.
